The Night My Friend Sh*t On His Passport

Your passport is your most valuable item when you travel which sort of explains this story, although not in a manner in which you would expect…. Read on for an unbelievable story about a lost passport, a pile of poo and evaporating money!

Losing your passport is the worst thing for a backpacker!

So I was back in Kathmandu, Nepal with 2 friends and we had all just come back from 2 weeks in the Himalayas on the Mount Everest base camp trek. We got back to the city on the Tuesday afternoon – I had my first shower for 12 days (amazing!), and went straight to a steak house to eat some red meat after being stuck on lentils and rice for 2 weeks.

The view of Mount Everest from Base Camp

We were delighted that we all had mate it to base camp, altitude sickness hadn’t hit us too badly so it was celebration time in Kathmandu. We were flying to China in 2 days and the Olympics were on in Beijing at the time which meant the Chinese government were limiting visas and cracking down hard on any misdemeanours so we didn’t wanna risk turning up to the airport at 5am drunk! It had been such hard work to get our Chinese visas a couple of months ago that we treasured them with all our heart, we had family flying to China to meet us all for the first time in a year so it was going to be a big happy reunion – this left us with only tonight to party, so party we did.

Everest Steak House Kathmandu

We left our hostel and headed to the reggae bar in Kathmandu centre, went to the top floor, kicked off our flip-flops and the celebrations began. First round on me, 8 bottles of beer for the 4 of us, next round 8 more, next round 8more, next round 8 more – excessive? Perhaps, but come on we’d just seen Everest with our own eyes, we were entitled to get loose! The rounds kept coming, Bob Marley tunes were ringing out, people were smoking shisha everywhere when suddenly we realized we were pretty hammered. I looked around and Billy* (name changed) had gone, but quickly I saw him stagger out of the corridor as drunk as I have ever seen anyone, his hair all over the place but still smiling. “You alright mate?”, “yeah I’m fine, shall we go to another bar?”.

Off we went, the three of us (incidentally some b*stard had stolen my friend’s haviana flip-flops at the bar so he had to pinch someone elses to leave the place!) to another bar, and another bar, and another bar. It was now about 2am and we were singing songs that didn’t even exist, making up lyrics about us climbing Mount Everest – then I checked my pockets and said “I might be drunk but I’ve still got my wallet and passport”, my other friend said the same thing, back to Billy*… “sh*t, sh*t, sh*t – boys, I don’t have either”. Disaster! I mean a real disaster, so we went to every bar we had been to and pleaded with the staff, had they seen our mate’s passport (with Chinese visa) or wallet (with all his cash)? No? Ok next bar, same thing. We scoured the streets we had walked on but found nothing, until we got back to the reggae bar – upstairs we went, (stolen) flip-flops off again and asked everyone in the place had they seen anything. No, no, no. After a couple of hours of this we had to cut our losses and head to bed, drunk, around 4.30am. Billy* set his alarm for 8am when he and I would head down to the British embassy and Chinese embassy to help him get things sorted out.

8am, we groggily clambered out of our beds and headed to the British embassy “of course we can help, we can issue you with an emergency passport, valid for one entry to get home, do you have some ID”. 1) I am traveling, I don’t want to go home, I want to go to China tomorrow and 2) No, I don’t have any bloody ID because my wallet was stolen along with my passport, like I already told you. “Well then sir, I’m afraid we can’t help you very much”. Right, great, thanks British embassy, it’s been a blast.

Thamel at night

We calmed ourselves down, made an appointment to speak to the boss later on that day and headed over to the Chinese embassy. One staff member in a little booth outside the embassy says “Give passport and you go in”, “lost my passport, that’s why I want to go in”, “no passport, no enter”. Wow, these embassies are great! After 20 minutes of pleading, explaining and groveling we got in and went straight to the consular section. Lost a passport, here’s a scan of the Chinese visa that was in it (very smart to do that), can you re-issue it please, I’m going to the Olympics tomorrow. “no, you have to go to home country and get a new visa” WTF?!? So here we were with a copy of the visa and they were refusing to give a new one without flying from Kathmandu -> London -> Beijing. Not helpful, we stormed out.

Thamel area in Kathmandu in the daytime

One last check of the bars then, our last hope. Billy* was stressing out hugely, his brother was flying to meet him in China tomorrow, he had tickets to Olympic events, hotels booked and it looked like he wouldn’t be going. One bar checked… nothing. Another bar checked… nothing. We finally get back to the reggae bar “sorry, I know we asked last night but did you find a wallet and passport last night, it’s really important”?. They tell us to wait…

Out comes a cleaning lady wearing two long plastic gloves (like the kind you see a farmer putting on before he has his way with a cow), she doesn’t speak any English but the barman translates, they talk a little and then out of her pocket she pulls a passport and a wallet, making sure to only hold the corners of each.

Billy* is jumping up and down with delight, hugs the cleaner, kisses me – we’re ecstatic! He grabs his passport and flicks through it, it’s soaking wet and there are brown lumps and stains over most of the pages, it’s giving off a pretty pungent smell. He grabs his wallet, same smell, opens it up and all the cash has gone (probably about $250+) but, although he’s not happy about the cash being gone, he’s still delighted with having his stuff back. So as the hysteria dies down, we ask why is his passport and wallet covered in sh*t?!

The cleaner, through the barman’s translation, said she doesn’t know why it was there but she came to work this morning and you could smell the toilet from outside the building. When she entered it she was nearly sick, the entire bowl was filled with crap. So she put on her gloves, grabbed the plunger and the poor lady went to work. As she bailed out the poo, she could eventually reach her arm into the toilet, to the U-Bend and feel the blockage. She fought with it until she got her hands around it, yoinked it out and you’d never guess what the blockage was – a British passport and a wallet!

FLASH BACK from Billy*. When we were in the reggae bar last night, we had been joking about how bad it would be to lose our passports, what with China clamping down on visas, and us missing the Olympics. So as we got more and more drunk, the thought had stuck with Billy*, as had losing his wallet. Anyway, he went to the skanky toilet because the steak from earlier was causing him ‘problems’, as he sat on the toilet he thought of an ingenious plan on how not to lose his passport or wallet. So… he stood up, took his passport and wallet in one hand, bent down and shoved his hand down the toilet, up to the U-Bend and stashed his passport and wallet there! No-one will find it now, he thought and he was sort of right. But he was drunk so he quickly forgot his cunning plan, sat back down and took a shit on the very same toilet. He flushed, stood up and left.

As we partied the night away little did we know that Billy’s* passport and wallet had blocked the only toilet in the reggae bar, so drunk backpackers being drunk backpackers, if they needed to go then they went! So the night went on and more and more people proceeded to shit in the toilet, on top of Billy’s* shit until the bowl was almost overflowing.

On discovering this, I’m cracking up at the story, doubled over in laughter when Billy* asks her what happened to all the money in the wallet, after a quick translation he gets told that they are not sure but that the money must have “evaporated” in the blockage!!! Brilliant! ‘evaporated!’ We both thought the cleaner had earned the money so we left it at that and went home, with poo-stained passport and Billy’s* empty wallet.

Just before Billy* got escorted to the immigration room!

Incidentally, we entered Nepal a couple of weeks previously through a Western border crossing that nobody uses because the Maoists controlled that region then. So our visa was literally written in biro by the border guard, so unofficial looking. As Billy’s* passport had sat in a well of poo all night, the ink had run and was almost invisible now. Billy*, still in a panic about getting to China, thinks “f*ck it, I’ll just rewrite the visa myself, it’ll look the same” pulls out a biro and redraws the visa. To the airport we go, Billy* tries to get stamped out of the country, nope… he gets summoned to the interrogation room and questioned why his passport is in such terrible condition and why he has forged his Nepalese visa! After much explaining, he gets escorted by the police to the passport counter, gets escorted through the airport and is told to go to China, and never come back to Nepal. End of the story – brilliant, brilliant, brilliant! Now you know where not to stash your passport next time you’re worried about it.

Holy shh…. hahahaha that is by far one of the most outlandish stories I have ever heard! How on earth even amidst intense intoxication did your friend think that was an appropriate place to hide a passport…I’m dying laughing right now.
PS Just found your blog while looking for something on Kilimanjaro…looking forward to reading a lot more!

Oh. My. God. Hahahahahahaha! Seriously….stashing your passport and wallet in the U-bend of a Nepalese toilet?!?!?! Oh and that poor cleaning lady….I hear you on the Embassy staff, too. They’re always such delightful folk! But oh my god….a shit covered passport….I mean I crapped on the floor of my apartment before (as it sounds) but luckily my passport was nowhere near. Just the poor vinyl covering on the floor.

Unfortunately my partner has a story of his flatmate shitting on their apartment stairs after a night out and my partner being the first in the morning to wake up and discover it along side a pile of clothes….. needless to say they soon woke up the ‘offender’ who was passed out naked in bed and made him get to cleaning. … to this day they still have no idea why he decided to get naked and have a poo on the stairs in the middle of the night… and neither does he ……….

Methinks Billy is a bit of a massive idiot. It’s like his drunken thought process was: what’s the worst thing that could possibly happen to my passport? It could get flushed down a toilet full of shit! I know … I’ll stick it in there myself, that way nobody else can meddle with it.

oh it’s easy mate – in the top right hand corner of my site – you see ‘subscribe to onestep4ward’, just whack your email in there (it’s free, dont worry!) and you’ll get updates when i post new articles every week or so

I’m surprised you decided to embellish half the story to be honest – it would have been funny enough as it was.

I’m probably most surprised that educated people believe that “Billy” actually chose to place his passport in the toilet though. And that there was an entire bowl full of faeces that stank out the entire building – I mean, how many people take a dump when they’re out clubbing?? (Especially in the 20 minutes before closing time).

Be very careful when telling stories about your friends -“Billy” may just start to publish some stories about you!

This is one of my favourite stories and everyone I’ve met since knows it…sorry “Billy”.

So in reading this message I just thought that it would be worth putting my two cents in aswell. I was the one who got their Havaianas stolen!! As everyone will probably know/find out when they visit any of the bars in Kathmandu!

So I can confirm that all of the details of this story are true and no embellishments have been made as I witnessed it all apart from 8am the next morning, as me being such a great friend stayed in bed to sleep off the disgusting amount of alcohol consumed the previous night. I can still remember the passport’s smell and the how funny I found it at the Nepalese border. (Although still quite nervous for “Billy”!)

If this post is actually “Billy” trying to throw the sent off, (Pun intended!) then I will forgive him.

Ah yes, I’ve heard this story before. Pretty mortifying, I must say. Billy must’ve been doing some pretty crazy drugs to actually believe that it would be a good idea to hide wallet and passport in the toilet. Bit of a stretch there?

Holy crap! (literally I guess). That is the most awesome story ever. I can’t believe it actually happened. The best part about it is that it was actually his idea to shove the passport down the toilet. Brilliant. Haha… reading this was a fantastic way to start the day.

I once lost my passport when completely sloshed. I just dropped it on the ground. I was in this big camp and someone found it, then overheard my name being said and asked if this was me. I was so drunk I squinted at my passport and my first thought was “Omg someone has forged my passport!”. I couldn’t believe I had lost it. Second worst hangover of my life the next day and 8 hours on a bus

Brilliant even though he was in deep sh*t (with passport and wallet to match), he was lucky enough to retrieve them and get to China (with a little adventure on the side )…and on the bright side – there is no need for him to go back to Nepal – he needed to reach China, and reach it he did